City issues stormwater report

The City of Elmhurst ex-perienced a significant rain event on Saturday, Oct. 14. Precipitation totals indicate parts of Elmhurst received more than seven inches of rain in a 24-hour period, which equates to between a 50- and 100-year rain event. All stormwater systems per-formed properly and as ex-pected. All nine of the re-cently completed new stormwater basins were online and several took water as designed, with a total ca-pacity of 82 acre-feet.

The City’s Public Works crews worked expeditiously throughout the day and night to remove debris from clogged inlets and to open city roadways. All major roadways were open with the exception of the temporary closure (one hour) of Robert Palmer Drive underpass. The city experienced some street flooding in various areas, however little to no overland structural flooding was re-ported. Wastewater Treat-ment plant staff monitored the pumping stations and plant continuously through-out the storm. The new ex-cess flow tank for southwest Elmhurst was activated and diverted almost 2 million gallons of wastewater.

Rainfall Totals were as follows:

Central Elmhurst 7.6”

North Elmhurst 5”

South Elmhurst 6.8”

Prior to this weekend’s rain event, Public Works Crews have cleaned 2,300 of the storm sewer inlets throughout the city this year. The remainder of inlets are scheduled to be cleaned this fall. This year, crews have also cleaned and checked the structural integrity of 36 miles of storm sewer pipe. Over the past two years, the city has completed nine Stormwater Management Projects with a total capacity of 82 acre-feet of additional storage. All of these new stormwater basins were online during the recent rain event and several took water as designed.

Please vis-it elmhurststormwaterplan.org for information on the City of Elmhurst Stormwater Management projects and plans.